Slim Twig

SLIM TWIG with U.S. GIRLS and SUN RA RA RA at the Dakota (249 Ossington), tonight (Thursday, August 18). $7. 416-850-4579. See listing

Slim Twig has cut his hair. His signature pompadour has been replaced by a much more conservative crew cut. The change is dramatic enough that when he arrives at the Only Café, I almost don't recognize him.

"It's just a summer thing," he says. "It's too hot right now for that hairstyle."

Still, it parallels a change in his music. After cycling through Suicide-influenced gothabilly to hip-hop-referencing cut-and-paste experimentation, the 23-year-old songwriter/sometime actor is now reinventing himself as a 60s pop craftsman.

Tonight at the Dakota, he releases a new 12-inch (Palmist) split record with experimental soul-pop pushers U.S. Girls that hints at the new direction. Two of its songs, Priscilla and I'll Always Be A Child, will reappear, likely in different versions, on a full-length LP set for release on Paper Bag in the fall.

"My emphasis now is on classically composed and performed pop songs," says the thoughtful Toronto musician between sips of beer. "I'm trying to appropriate things from 60s music like the Zombies and the Kinks as well as Motown and Philly soul, always with a producer's eye.

"The structures of those songs are so precise; it's exhilarating trying to plug in my own choruses and pre-choruses and to fit my own ideas into those rigidly defined parameters."

In the new material, Twig abandons his sample-based technique for live drums, bass, strings and especially keyboards. He's solidified a new four-piece lineup for shows, and, for the first time, collaborates with the members on record.

"I'm trying to remove some of the ‘weirdo' and ‘avant-garde' connotations I got in the past," he says. "So much of what I was doing before was about opposing conventions and trying to push music as a whole, as pretentious as that might sound. But I feel like I was alienating people.

"I think music should challenge people, and it's great if it does, but it can be a fruitless [exercise] at times. The feeling is not as fulfilling as it sounds. People wear that as a badge of honour sometimes, the fact that they're pursuing music on their own terms. I totally admire that. But I just don't think that's what I'm actually about. I want to be a songwriter."

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Interview Clips

Slim Twig explains how he's become a self-professed "scholar of pop music:"

Slim explains why he'd like to transition fully into a producer's role:

Slim explains how his new lineup is his most "official" and his most collaborative: